Steven Den Beste strikes to the heart of the matter on Canada et al. in Afghanistan. The fundamental truth is there: there is no strategic interest there for the Western powers. And our involvement there, however laudable, is a negative effort at its basic level. In other words, we put about a third of the combat power of the Canadian Army into a place we fundamentally don't care about. in order to have a plausible excuse not to help the US effort in Iraq. Where, it could be reasonably argued, we do have a strategic interest..... Smooth operators we got running things here.